Dozens kidnapped from Islamic school in northern Nigeria | Al Jazeera

An armed gang abducted dozens of students from an Islamic school in the northcentral Nigerian state of Niger on Sunday, police and state government officials said.

Some 200 children were at the school at the time of Sunday’s attack, the Niger state government said on Twitter, adding that “an unconfirmed number” had been taken.

The abduction came a day after 14 students from a university in northwestern Nigeria were freed, having spent 40 days in captivity.

A spokesman for Niger state’s police said in a statement that gunmen on motorcycles attacked the town of Tegina, in the Rafi local government area of the state, at approximately 3pm (14:00 GMT) on Sunday.

He said the attackers were “shooting indiscriminately and abducted a yet to be ascertained number of children at Salihu Tanko Islamic school”. One person was shot dead during the attack and a second person was seriously injured, the state governor’s spokeswoman said.

Armed groups carrying out kidnapping for ransom have been blamed for a series of raids on schools and universities in northern Nigeria in recent months, abducting more than 700 students for ransom since December.

The school’s owner, Abubakar Tegina, told the Reuters news agency in a phone interview that he witnessed the attack.